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Mexican official's last tweet recalls previous fatal crash

November 11, 2011 | 3:24
pm

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- In an odd coincidence, the last message posted on Twitter by Francisco Blake Mora, the Mexican interior secretary who died in a helicopter crash Friday, recalls a predecessor who died in a similar way.

What turned out to be Blake's last tweet came on Nov. 4, the third anniversary of the Learjet crash that killed Juan Camilo Mouriño in 2008. It said: "Today we remember Juan Camilo Mouriño three years after his passing, a human being who worked to construct a better Mexico."

Blake was in the habit of tweeting about his ministry's activities once or twice a day, but he had been silent in the last week.

The message was reposted and cited across the social mediasphere Friday as the crash that killed Blake and seven others stunned Mexicans and shook President Felipe Calderon's government.

The incident invited immediate parallels to the 2008 tragedy, which many Mexicans refused to believe was an accident, which was the official ruling, The Times reported at the time.

Blake Mora was Calderon's fourth interior secretary and the second to die in an aviation crash. Calderon said the government would investigate Friday's incident.